Arizona teens decorate swastika cupcakes for Jewish friend's birthday

A Jewish teen in Paradise Valley, Arizona, hosted several tasteless guests at her latest birthday party, NBC affiliate 12 News reported. Birthday partygoers decorated cupcakes with chocolate swastikas, and the incident gained attention after photo on Facebook started to circulate. (The Facebook post has since been taken down, but you can see a photo of the cupcakes below.)

While the swastika motif used to be a symbol of well-being for many religions, it later came to symbolize "Aryan identity" and German nationalism when the Nazis made it their symbol in 1920, according to the United States Holocaust Museum. The swastika is now a symbol of hate and anti-Semitism, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

"When you joke with symbols like the swastika, you begin to normalize them and make it very casual within our society," Carlos Galindo-Elvira, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in Arizona, told 12 News.

There have been other reports of swastika sightings since Donald Trump was elected earlier this month. Two swastikas were spray-painted on a building in Philadelphia, Mic previously reported.

But there's a silver lining to the cupcake conundrum: The viral photo has sparked productive outrage. The birthday girl's mother, Deborah Muller, posted to Facebook on Nov. 20, saying she spoke with the other girls' parents about why the act was hurtful. Muller's post has since been deleted.

Muller did not immediately respond to Mic's requests for comment.

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